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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 4597667" data-attributes="member: 48965">I never said I didn't see value in stunts (improvised actions).  You were the one who brought specific powers into the conversation (which wasn't a rogue power in the first place) but for the intents of this discussion specific powers really don't matter.  What does matter is that if the PC's have a more reliable and broad way to do movement+damage or even just damage...how do you entice them to try something different, which is probably (though not necessarily always) harder to do.  Ok, that's cool...I didn't really want to get into a debate about powers vs. improvised actions in exact terms... though I guess in the end, with my players,  that is what it has been boiling down to.    Looking at your examples, I would be wary of the stunning one...it seems easily repeatable and easily abused (how would you stop that from happening?).  The other ones I really like, and I think you've struck a pretty good balance as far as designing them...what I'm wondering is how do you get your PC's to disregard the powers for a moment and improvise something.  I was thinking some more, and I was pondering on the fact that maybe PC's having all the math spelled out for their powers, yet essentially being in the dark about improvised actions, could be th cause of some of the reluctance to try different things.Perhaps then the payoff for improvised actions should be slightly larger than using a power...since most of the time there will be more inherent risk.  D you agree with that?Side Note:  One thing I think would have been really beneficial for 4e to steal from Exalted is the stunt rules, where a cool description garners you a bonus of +1 to +3 on your action...depending on how well the description is given.  I think this not only gives PC's incentive to think outside the box, but also gives them a boost to offset some of the difficulty in improvised actions.  I also tin it's telling that Exalted, where you have many more charms than you ever will in D&D, still implemented this rule.  I think these are the type of things you have to implement in striving for good game design when it comes to a system where you have codified "powers" for your character.  Hopefully in the future we'll see the D&D designers address this perhaps in an article or something.</blockquote>

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